How can I support the support department better?

Question

With the best will in the world, whatever software you (and me) write will have some kind of defect in it.

What can I do, as a developer, to make things easier for the support department (first line, through to third line, and development) to diagnose, workaround and fix problems that the user encounters.

Notes

• I'm expecting answers which are predominantly technical in nature, but I expect other answers to exist.
• "Don't release bugs in your software" is a good answer, but I know that already.

Answer 1

• Log as much detail about the environment in which you're executing as possible (probably on startup).

• Give exceptions meaningful names and messages. They may only appear in a stack trace, but that's still incredibly helpful.

• Allocate some time to writing tools for the support team. They will almost certainly have needs beyond either your users or the developers.

• Sit with the support team for half a day to see what kind of thing they're having to do. Watch any repetitive tasks - they may not even consciously notice the repetition any more.

• Meet up with the support team regularly - make sure they never resent you.

Answer 2

If you have at least a part of your application running on your server, make sure you monitor logs for errors.

When we first implemented daily script which greps for ERROR/Exception/FATAL and sends results per email, I was surprised how many issues (mostly tiny) we haven't noticed before.

This will help in a way, that you notice some problems yourself before they are reported to support team.